Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

my boy befo’ they had a chance to see that everthin’ was all legal. It was Ben Roy, Johnny’s own half brother, who threw that rope over the tree, and he knew all the time that his daddy done give Johnny them papers.” The gun thudded to the floor.
    John rushed to her side and guided Becky to the rickety chair.
    He tried to give her a sip of her medicinal whiskey when he heard Annalaura shudder. He couldn’t bear to look upon his wife’s face as he walked across the floor, stooped, retrieved his pistol, and headed for the door.
    “Have my children ready to go as soon as I tell you.” At the doorway, his back to her, he paused and called over his shoulder. “I may not kill that cracker tonight. Maybe not even tomorrow, but I’m gonna get black man’s justice offen Alexander McNaughton. You just worry on it.” He let the door slam behind him.
    Mounting his horse, he nudged the animal in the side and let him have his head. He knew what he had to do, but he hadn’t yet sorted out the when and the how of it. The sun was well placed in the sky, and it was halfway to noon already. When the horse reached the lane, the animal slowed its pace, waiting for the tug on the reins. Right would take him across Ben Roy’s acres and onto the roundabout back road to Lawnover. Left would take him back to the mid-forty and right past Alexander McNaughton’s house to the direct road to Lawnover. Whichever way he went, some farmer would see him. And no colored man not working on some white farmer’s land had any business astride a horse riding up and down country lanes during prime work hours. He jerked the reins to the left and let the animal find his own pace.
    As the horse clopped closer to the McNaughton place, the nightmare vision that hung in his head of another man touching Annalaura churned at his stomach. When he blinked his eyes to make the spectacle go away, he could see the leaves on the trees move slightly. He supposed the day had brought a slight breeze with it, but his outside body had gone numb. There was no feel of the warming sun on his arms, or the touch of the light breeze brushing his cheek.
    John neared the McNaughton back-forty, where a little stand of cherry trees stood twenty yards distant. The buds on the limbs were full, but they hadn’t yet blossomed. Normally, he could taste their promise, even this early in the season, but now, all that was on his mind, all that he could see, was Alexander McNaughton putting the sweet honeyed lips of his Annalaura into his own white mouth. And worse.
    He couldn’t recall how he got to the ground, nor when the horse stopped near the little stand of cherry trees. He only knew that his knees barely made it to the grass when all the bile stored up over the past twenty-four hours spilled out over the fresh green carpet. He couldn’t stop. His woman had been dirtied, defiled, and his world told him he had to take it like it never happened. To hear Becky tell it, half the colored population of Lawnover would be murdered before tomorrow sunrise if he touched one hair on McNaughton’s pale head.
    Cleveland, and even ten-year-old Doug, might swing from a tree. Little Henry would wind up in some workhouse, while Lottie would become another white man’s plaything before her seventh birthday, all because he dared do what any husband on this earth had a right to do.
    Becky and Annalaura would have him believe there was justice in running away. Justice and honor in swallowing his words and tipping his cap to every white skin, if that’s what it took to keep his children safe. Didn’t those women know there were worse things than not being safe? The bile grabbed him, and he retched to get it out. All of it had to be gone to cleanse his own soul before he died of the pain.
    Ten minutes, maybe twenty, passed before he had the strength to try to stand. He reached for a branch to help pull himself to his feet, but its suppleness reminded him of Annalaura. In time, the cherry buds would deliver rich, ripe, dark fruit. But time would never deliver Annalaura to him the way she was. How could he ever mount her again when all he would ever see and smell when he came near her from this day on would be Alexander McNaughton? He rolled to his side, pulled his knees to his chest and squeezed his eyes so tight that the pain came to his head.
    “Forgive me, Lord Jesus. I can’t let this go, though I knows a good man should. It’s best fo’ me to keep on livin’ so I can take